


Over the sea

by Insecuriosity



Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Humanformers, M/M, Mer AU, Merformers, Mermaids, Other, Prowl x Jazz anniversary challenge 2016, human!Prowl, mer, mer!Jazz
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-30
Updated: 2016-09-30
Packaged: 2018-08-18 17:58:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8170709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Insecuriosity/pseuds/Insecuriosity
Summary: Prowl is stuck on a small rowing boat between the ice. The motor is broken, and his radio is waterlogged. All he can do is wait for his rescue to come.As he sits and contemplates the decisions that brought him to the middle of the arctic, a mer takes interest in his boat...





	

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [anniversarychallenge16](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/anniversarychallenge16) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
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> A trip to the arctic meant to study a group of seals goes wrong, and now one of our oreo-duo is stuck on a small rowing boat between the ice.  
> What they thought to be just normal orca's, turn out to be orca-mer, and one of them takes a specific interest in the boat....

The treacherous thing about nature, is that it doesn’t announce itself via a buildup. There’s no intense music, no change of tone in lighting or scene – your world just extends from a safe research mission, into your very much possible death. 

Right now, for example, Prowl sat in his well-used artic research boat. The arctic sea was calm and flat, between the floating chunks of ice, and to an untrained eye, there was nothing amiss. There was a single family of seals lazing on a slab of ice, the sky was foggy with clouds… and there was a pod of cetaceans around here. The odd cries that had registered on the ship’s equipment had been Prowl’s excuse for going all the way out here on his own.  
If the motor of the boat was still functional, Prowl would have basked in the nature of this place. Just him, some items, and nature doing what it had been doing for centuries. 

It was summer in the arctic right now, and the sun never left the sky. According to the camera man that had Chromedome had insisted on taking along, the arctic had countless ‘golden hours’ because of this. Prowl assumed that that had to do with the orange-red glow that liked to dominate the scenery during the summer nights.  
The camera man. Prowl clenched his gloved hands into fists. It hurt more than he ever wanted to admit to see Chromedome with the camera man. Everything that had been a struggle and source of strife between Prowl and Chromedome, was banter and affectionate touches between them. 

Prowl hadn’t known that Chromedome’s new lover was also the new camera man, otherwise he would have thought twice about joining this particular expedition. He still couldn’t help but wonder how long Rewind and Chromedome had been together with how natural they were with eachother. They looked like they had know each other for years.  
Chromedome had promised that they hadn’t been together, but Prowl knew the worth of Chromedome’s promises. He bitterly hoped that Rewind would suffer from those little Chromedome-lies just as much as Prowl had. 

Going out here had been a way to escape the ship, and the everlasting arguments between him and Chromedome- now made worse by the presence of Rewind.  
Those trips would most likely not happen again soon now that he boat no longer worked. Once he was back safe and sound on the ship, Prowl would mourn the loss – but right now he wanted nothing more than to be found.

It had taken a few minutes of struggling with the boat, and cursing up a storm before Prowl had decided to radio his colleagues. It had been a quick, to-the-point conversation, and they were now steering the ship to his position. 

Prowl couldn’t say that he would have liked to talk with either Chromedome or Rewind - but the silence and uncertainty of his situation were wearing him down. He didn’t want to sit here and think about all the possible ways that he could die here.  
A leak in his boat, ice plates crushing his boat, polar bear attack, hypothermia… or Chromedome and Rewind deciding that Prowl didn’t deserve saving. 

Prowl was profoundly terrible at chit-chat or other meaningless talk, but he would have preferred it if someone had kept him company during his wait. It would make the time pass quicker, and it would distract him from all the knowledge he had of the dangers.  
Polar bears, shifting ice that could crush his boat, possible loss of fingertips if the rescue took too long to arrive… He held onto his hand radio, and wondered what kind of excuse he would use for calling Chromedome and Rewind again.

The harsh ‘PFSHhh’ of a cetacean blowhole sounded from somewhere close by, and Prowl jolted a little. Not too far off, a smooth black back was curving out of the water, leisurely rolling back into the water. An all-black tail poked out of the water for a moment, and Prowl could see a series of nicks on its left fluke. A whale!  
Near Prowl’s first sighting, other cetaceans came up for a breath of air. Some of the seals had looked up at the sound, the younger ones taking the lead of their mother and hopping to the middle of their ice-chunk.

Prowl searched for his hand-camera, and tried to curb his desire to be as quick as possible. If he dropped the camera into the water, he would be capturing nothing at all!  
Pressing the right buttons through his glove was a long and arduous task, but Prowl had his camera fixed and recording within minutes. During that time, the cetaceans had begun to encircle the seals on the ice. 

Prowl frowned. That was odd. Most whales depended on algae or plankton – very few of them hunted. The ones that did hunt were usually small and built to be sleek and speedy – with an obvious exception when it came to orcas.  
These were no orca’s however - or at least, not all of them were orca’s. Prowl had seen at least three surfacings without a dorsal fin, or even a bump that would hint at there having once BEEN a dorsal fin. He would not put it past the nearby humans to try and get a buck out of orca fins, but that didn’t appear to be the case. 

A mutation then? It would not be overly surprising. Cetaceans living in the arctic often had no dorsal fin, since it would only hinder them when traversing the maze of shifting ice plates during the summer. If they had been predominantly living out here for a long time, it would make sense that their dorsal fins might be lost.

One of the cetaceans came up for a breath, but what came out of the water was definitely no snout. For a moment, Prowl had no idea what he was looking at, since it was not a snout that broke the water surface, but an all black, humanlike head.  
Prowl stared at the display of his camera, and then past it – just to check if he was really seeing what he thought he was seeing. The head was enormous, and a thick neck stretched to look at the seals on the ice. Similarly pitch-black hands, finned and clawed, held onto the edge of the ice, and heaved the creature a little higher above the surface. 

A mermaid. 

Well. That certainly explained why their equipment had shown such an odd combination of frequencies.  
The mer was turning it’s head away from the seals – like any animal would when looking for danger. With such humanlike features and it’s arms helping it lean on the ice, the mer reminded Prowl of a young child in the pool, leaning on the edge and looking for their friends. 

It had spots over its body and belly, mimicking the signature coat of an orca. 

The mer’s head turned, and then its eyes looked straight into the camera. It was very apparent that it had never seen something like Prowl’s boat before, and it let out a call. Judging from how the orca’s twisted swam away from his boat, it had been an alert or alarm.  
It took a conscious effort not to say something inane like ‘no worries, just carry on’ to the mer and the orca’s. Unexpected noise or movement was far more likely to aggravate them than pacify them – and the mer was obviously just as much of a hunter as the orca’s. It had opened its mouth, showing a soft pink inside, lined with countless small teeth. 

With a seal-like bark, the mer let go of the ice, and sank back down into the water. Its head popped up between the backs of the orcas every few moments, unerringly looking in Prowl’s direction.

Prowl waited and filmed, and it very soon became apparent that there was only one mer with the orcas. The shape of the mer’s tail was different, with longer tips at the end of its fluke, and the lack of a dorsal fin made it stick out among the rest.

It didn’t take very long before the orca’s seemed to deem him a non-threat, and continued their hunt of the seals. Prowl had a close up look at their hunting technique. A group of three or more would swim close to the surface and create a wave, flushing the seals off their perch.  
Prowl kept as still and non-threatening as possible. He knew plenty about orca’s, and he knew they were smart enough to topple or sink his boat if they felt like it. They were also uninterested in him and his boat for so long as he remained passive.

It was the mer that pushed his unease into fear – because it did not join in the hunt of the seals. It had instead begun to innocuously circle his boat, diving and surfacing in the different open spaces scattered through the ice.  
Prowl had never held a camera so perfectly still in his entire life as he tracked the mer. They were not rare- mers in itself. The more tropical areas of the world swarmed with them, and some states regarded them as pests, but Prowl could not remember there being reports of arctic mer. Let alone ones that lived near orca families.

It was coming closer and closer to his boat, and Prowl wondered if this unique footage was worth the danger he was in right now. The orca’s might not be interested in tipping over his boat, but a mer might be- and a mer had clever fingers and claws.  
Mers were a rare find in cold seas, and even the most docile breeds were liable to attack a human boat if it tried to come close. Years upon years, humans had hunted mers, either because of superstition or for personal gain, had ensured that there was no love between humans and mers. 

This mer To find a pod of potentially undocumented, non-human fearing artic mers, was something out of a daydream! He was sure to get greater funds if he played his cards right. The public would fall for the human-like faces and behaviour, and the money would come rolling in soon after-…. 

Prowl almost dropped his camera as his boat lurched, and he yelled as a wave of icy water swept into the boat and on top of him. Even through the thick layers of fibre, Prowl felt his skin going numb.  
The loud PSHHHHh of a blowhole expelling air sounded only inches away from his boat, and when he looked, he stared right into a wet, alien face. For a moment Prowl thought that the mer had no eyes – so black were the shiny orbs staring at him. Large and clawed hands were clasped over the edge of his boat, and Prowl’s breath shot into his throat as the entire thing began to tilt. 

Prowl scrambled to hold onto the edge of the boat, and the wriststrap of his camera yanked on his arm. The mer was struggling, trying to lift himself into the boat. Water began to pour into the boat even as Prowl tried to keep it level. His backpack slid into the water, and Prowl could feel his boots losing grip. He was going to fall – he was going to fall into the water-!  
Right before Prowl lost his grip, the mer let go of the boat, and Prowl was knocked against the plastic as it bobbed wildly to regain balance. A layer of water at the bottom of the boat ensured that he was even more soaked now. 

A quick look at the mass of muscle an fat at the side of his boat showed that the mer had diverted its attention to the lost backpack, clawed fingers playing and pulling at the fabric.  
Prowl couldn’t feel his limbs as he scrambled towards the motor and yanked on the ignition. The engine, just like before, did nothing but sputter a little before dying away. He tried again. 

Prowl abandoned his efforts, and pressed his back against the motor. The mer was bumping against the boat – like an unnecessary reminder that the cold was not the only thing Prowl had to fear.  
His radio had been hit by the water when the mer had tried to get into the boat, but it still cracked with life when he pressed the transmit-button. 

“Chromedome – there is a mer near my boat- it tried to get in. There’s water in the boat. How far out are you? Over.”  
The radio was quiet for a moment, and then produced a bunch of garbled noise- proving that it was very much NOT working the way it should. “-…e.r..-mu..-all-…”

Prowl shook the radio, and felt another rivulet of water running into his sleeves.  
“I can’t hear you-“ He continued, and his heart jumped into his throat when the mer bumped against the boat again. “There is a mer, attacking my boat, and I can’t get the engine working. I am not joking, you know I don’t joke- hurry up!”

This time, the radio remained completely silent, and Prowl was left all on his own.  
With his mind lingering on movies, he detached the paddle from where it was situated on the boat. He brandished it like a spear, and stared into the water. His backpack had given up the ghost, and several old wrappers and fruit bars were floating between the chunks of ice. The book he had been reading had been subjected to a thorough search by the mer, it appeared. Prowl’s bookmarker cheekily floated alongside the boat.

The mer itself was underneath the boat. Prowl could see its tail twist and turn as the creature explored, and the sound of nails skittering over the plastic made his skin feel clammy.  
If it tried to come into the boat again, Prowl was going to use the paddle to give it a hearty smack. 

There was no telling if that would drive it off. In general, it would scare any animal, but if they were curious or hungry enough they would certainly approach again. Attacking before the mer made a move could make it aggressive.  
The mer’s black head popped out of the water, and Prowl readied himself to bring his paddle down if necessary. 

The mer made a chirping sound, not unlike a wheezy dolphin, but it didn’t try to enter the boat again. Instead, as Prowl tracked the mer with his eyes, he found himself locking gazes with the creature. Not unlike a seal, the eye was almost completely black with only a small ring of white at the edges.  
The oddest part was just how intensely the mer tried to keep eye contact. It circled the boat, keeping its head as still as possible.

Prowl knew many things about animals, and it was making him very nervous that he had no idea if this intense staring contest was a battle for dominance, or something else. With humans, eye contact built strong relationships. With monkeys, apes and dogs, it was seen as part of a dominance fight. Where did mers fit into this?

The mer chirped again, and splashed its hands on the surface of the water, almost like a petulant child demanding playtime.Then, it patted its own chest- in a perfect imitation of a human trying to tell others their name, without the use of a language. It repeated the previous sound.  
Prowl stared. “….What?”

Was it…. Telling him its name? Prowl had no other explanation for the gestures, frightfully human as they were. Was he reading this wrong or not? 

At the lack of response, the mer let out another series of clicks and chirps and clumsily ran its hands over its face – then pointing at Prowl.  
“I’m sorry-“ Prowl suddenly found himself saying. Normally it was more Chromedome’s thing to speak to the animals they recorded. It was why their show did so well. “I don’t understand you.” 

The mer chattered on and rolled in the water, giving Prowl a perfect view of a dull grey underbelly and a pair of fins at its waist. On its face, it was wearing what appeared to be a smile – and what could be a threat display.  
Prowl was impartial to the smile. No animal showed its belly when frightened or when hunting. Maybe it was a neutral expression, set in the structure of the skull like with Dolphins.

He held out the paddle in front of him, and let it touch the water near the mer – ready to let it go should the mer try to pull him in. The mer curled its claws around it, and after a few careful sniffs, set his teeth into the plastic.  
Prowl let out a small huff and reveled in the tingly feeling of anxiety and excitement in his gut. He’d never been so close to a large wild animal before. Prowl knew how to keep a safe distance, but in this rare case, his choice had been taken from him. 

Still, everything was going well. The mer, gleaming like an unreal creation from a story, was playing with his paddle, following it along as Prowl moved it. In between, it would look at Prowl, as if checking if everything was still alright.

 _I should film this._

The thought came as a surprise to Prowl. In all his years of filming, he’d always chosen his personal well-being over good footage. It was Chromedome who’d sacrifice a few fingers if he though the footage would do well enough.  
He always wanted to get closer – take risks, see how quickly a viper could strike, or how close he could get to a rhino without provoking it. He dispensed fun stories and odd, disconnected facts. He was also very talented when it came to stirring up legal trouble. 

Prowl played police to Chromedome’s careless partying. He pulled Chromedome back when things began looking too dangerous, chastised him, and engaged him in heated arguments that their producer called ‘endearing banter’. 

The last half year or so, Rewind had begun looking out for Chromedome’s antics as well. Rewind could curb CHromedome more than Prowl could have hoped, and it had been an intense relief. Finally, Prowl had been able to focus on his facts and his lines, rather than trying to keep Chromedome from invoking disaster.  
Now, he realised that he could have seen it coming. His relationship with Chromedome had been built purely around how much time Prowl spent near him to reign him in. 

Prowl shook himself loose from those thoughts. They were what had driven him to go out here on his own in the first place, and he wanted to leave it behind.  
Instead, he was going to make amazing footage of this mer. 

Speaking of the mer – it had grabbed the edge of the boat again. This time, it seemed to understand that too much weight would topple the boat, and it just hung there, looking at Prowl’s legs and the items lying scattered at the bottom of the boat.  
It looked straight into the lens of the camera with a rolling chirp, and pointed at a soaked notebook. 

“Do you want to play with that?” Prowl asked. 

The mer chirped by way of an answer, and Prowl used his feet to toss the wet booklet at the mer. He got some great footage of the mer’s claws and fingers as he tore the notebook apart – even at one point testing the paper with his teeth. 

“You appear to be very smart.” Prowl said, and the mer looked at him. It almost appeared to be listening… Perhaps that was why it didn’t really feel right to narrate his video the way he usually would. “Of course, my ideas of your intelligence could just be based on how human your face is.”  
It was more comforting than Prowl had thought, to treat this situation like a part of his job. Nothing bad had happened yet, even though his feet were beginning to hurt with cold. His clothes were still partially wet. 

“I was taking the boat away from the ship to investigate an odd cetacean call a short distance away – and it was here that I happened to find a mer.” He narrated himself, and he got another few amazing shots as the mer turned its head towards the sound of his voice. “Yes, I am talking about you.”  
“I don’t know itsgender, and I’ve never seen any one of its species before. It has no dorsal fin, and though it carries some orca-esque colouring, it has a grey spotted belly.”

“He was with a troupe of orcas, with no other mers of his kind to accompany him. This leads me to believe that this mer might have been lost as a baby –pup?-, and taken in by these Orca’s. Cetaceans have been known to show compassion towards other species, most prominent example being the bottlenose dolphin.”

“Eerk! Iïik” The mer suddenly chirped. It was very obvious that he had finished playing with the notebook, and he appeared to be demanding more playthings.  
“It appears that our mer wants more playitems. I imagine that, just like orca’s and dolphins, his species is socially advanced and enjoys games.” 

Prowl searched through the boat. There was not much that was going to interest the mer for much longer. The First-Aid kit was one of those things that Prowl would not sacrifice just for fun, and there really wasn’t much else that he could miss.  
He wanted to keep the paddlesif things took a turn for the worst, he needed his clothes to keep the cold away, he had already lost most of his snacks to the sea… 

“I’m out of playthings for you.” He said. “You should rejoin your orca friends.”

The mer chirped again, and pulled at the boat – making it waggle on the surface. Prowl kept the camera aimed at its face as best as he could, and waited.  
As time passed the mer grabbed old ‘toys’ to play with. The notebook, for example, was turned into mush, and then carefully plastered on the mer’s arm and face. Then, when it was done playing, it began returning things to Prowl’s boat. It started with all that had gotten flushed overboard. After that, it began bringing in fish. 

It reminded Prowl of a video that a colleague had captured. A sea lion taking interest in him, feeding him penguins….  
With the fish being brought to his boat, Prowl suspected that the mer was thinking much along the same lines of the sea-lion. It was rather unfortunate that he had no equipment with him to see how the mer moved and hunted underwater.

Still, he was collecting footage of an unprecedented event. 

Eventually, the mer stopped hunting, and he just hung at the side of the boat, chirping. Between the two of them, an odd, meaningless conversation took place.  
The mer would chirp, growl, shriek, or chitter- and Prowl would reply. He had run out of narration some time ago, and the counter on his camera showed that he had been filming for a good two hours now. 

“I don’t know why you’re not leaving.” Prowl said to the mer. “I have nothing for you to play with anymore.”

The mer’s reply, unsurprisingly, was just more click and whistle sounds. 

“I appreciate it that you stay around. It keeps my mind off the cold.”A patchy blanket of clouds was hiding the sun, and Prowl’s clothes felt just as wet as before. He’d taken to trying the radio a few more times, but it appeared that the thing had stopped working altogether. “I have always had a hard time imagining how fat could keep creatures l-like you warm enough to survive in this water. I have a healthy layer of fat, and even a chilly day gets i-into my bone marrow.” 

Prowl’s clothes were still wet from when the mer had attempted to board the boat, and a patchy blanket of clouds was keeping the sun hidden.  
If the ice hadn’t been breaking into segments, Prowl might have gotten out of the boat to make a shelter out of snow – just to get away from the wind. It wasn’t a viable option in this case, and Prowl still isn’t sure what the mer ( or the orca’s ) would do if he was sitting on an easily-floodable ice chunk. If the boat itself didn’t have a layer of icy water in the bottom, he would have lied down. 

He was still filming when he stopped shivering.  
It’s not actually a good sign. Prowl’s limbs are prickling with cold static, and it feels like there are needles being driven into the tips of his fingers. 

“I n-need to warm up.” Prowl said to himself. There is no sign of the ship yet, and the wind his tinted a sharp white as it carries shards of snow and ice along. “It m-might still be some time before Chr-chromedome and Rewind find me.”

The mer playfully chirped back, and showed its belly again. It was odd to see it so playful and lesire, when Prowl was starting to doubt how well he could make it out.  
“I’ll have to try the snow-idea.” He mumbles. “T-tether the boat somehow – form a hole in the snow-“

It was an idea born out of desperation. The snow in the arctic was diverse, and there was no telling if any of the ice patches would have the right snow for building. If Prowl had wanted to be effective, he should have tried his plan several hours earlier.  
Still, he set himself into motion. One of the nearby icepatches, previously used by the seals, had a small mound of snow on top, and it would form a passable base.

With the paddle, he inches the boat closer to the promising patch of ice, and grabs onto the edge. And now to tether the boat-…. His gloved hands feel over the ice, but there is no snow. Prowl feels a bitter stress well up in the back of his throat.  
How can he tether the boat without an ice pick, or make a shelter without even some snow?! 

“F-fuck!” Chromedome would laugh at him now, if he were here to see Prowl curse. He’d been trying to bring out Prowl’s temper many times. Who knew that death-by-hypothermia was all it took?  
Prowl let his head rest against the ice, and finds it even harder to fight the drowsiness creeping up on him. He can’t lie down in the boat. The water would soak his clothes, and seep in between the water-proof cracks. Similarly, he can’t find it within himself to try and heave himself onto the ice. 

He’s so terribly tired. 

The mer splashed loudly somewhere in the water next to him, and Prowl fought to open his eyes. The mer was on the ice now – shaking off stray droplets of water – and then hopping closer to Prowl. Like a seal.  
He wanted to film it, really. The camera was still attached to Prowl’s wrist by the band, but the extra weight made it impossible to lift his arm. 

The mer’s claws grabbed onto Prowl’s arms, and Prowl struggled feebly as he was dragged out of his boat, and further onto the ice patch. By the time the mer stopped, Prowl had no idea how far he had been dragged.  
A weight not unlike a suitcase filled with water came to rest on top of him, and the overpowering scent of the mer distracted Prowl from the cold for just a moment. 

The mer smelled of salt, fish, and _wet fur_ of all things. This close up, Prowl could see that the mer had a coat of water proof hairs all over its arms, and presumably its entire body. “T-h mer has the fur of- a s-seal.” He muttered.  
The mer felt lukewarm, like a cup of tea left out to sit for too long. Prowl wondered how low his body temperature was, to register an artic animal’s skin as warm. 

He was so, so tired. Usually the ideas of his workload and the people at his job were enough to keep him awake ‘till deep into the night. Yet now that his life was at stake, somewhere far out on the ice, he couldn’t seem to keep his eyes from closing. 

Just for a moment. 

-

The day had started like any other day in Jazz’s life. A repetition of the same routines of his pod – and his fifteenth visit to the cold water with the white chunks.  
Seal was going to be on the menu for the coming weeks for as long as it was easy to catch, and then they would turn around, and again go wherever Jazz’s pod felt they needed to go. 

After long, long times of frustration, boredom, and fights with the others, Jazz had been getting to the last stage of grief; acceptance.  
He was a weak orca, with a mind that gave him ideas that his fellows could not understand, and he was never going to find the free, fun-filled life he had been dreaming of as an orca-calf. His life would be like the others in his family; feed, breed, protect the pod, and repeat. 

It was so hard to swallow – so terribly difficult to accept - but there was no other choice. Jazz would die on his own. He had tried to leave the pod, and he had never been so thin and miserable, or so cold when the sun was away. 

He would have to become content with the life he had now, bland as it was, or die alone. Alone and cold. 

Only today… today something new had shown itself.  
Jazz had thought that it was an odd piece of ice at first – dense enough to block all the light of the sun, but not at all as deep as the icy plates around it. He had come to investigate – hoping for something to occupy himself with as his pod hunted the seals on the ice. 

In that thing- that weird, light, yet firm thing- there had been a creature. Something that almost looked a little like Jazz.  
Jazz liked to swim upside down, and he had seen his malformed reflection in the surface sometimes. Very un-orca like, really, though his fore-fins had been very helpful in untangling trapped pod-members from nettings or lines. 

The creature he’d found had the exact same fore-fins. 

He’d stared so much that his eyes had begun to prickle from the wind, but it was the very same. Five small protrusions at the end of the fore-fins, and two places where the fin could bend in all kinds of directions.  
Even the creature’s head was vaguely like Jazz. 

The most striking difference between them was the odd, puffy skin of the other creature. It did not look like the smooth hide of an orca, or the matted pelt of a seal. It looked almost layered, even though Jazz could not see where one part started and one ended.  
Would Jazz look like that, if he came out of the water, and let his coat dry? 

Jazz had tried to come closer to investigate, but the floating thing had not been able to carry his weight- and he had almost toppled it.  
Still, the creature had proven to be an amazing find. 

It made interesting new sounds – and it moved like nothing Jazz had ever seen before. It didn’t act the same way as most animals did. It focused on odd things, like the many odd rocks that it had collected, and it continued making sounds that did not at all seem like threats or calls for help.  
Jazz played with the creature, and was never more delighted to find that it seemed just as interested in him, as he was in it. So many toys – so many interesting and new things! Tastes, textures, images – more than he had seen in his entire life, now all condensed inside of this odd floating thing with the weird creature in it. 

They played, even though there were no clear rules. They talked a little bit, even though neither could understand the other… And finally, the odd creature decided to come sunbathing on the ice.  
Jazz watched as the creature struggled to get on the ice, and his own enthusiasm drove him to help. He wanted to get closer – wanted to meet this creature/person. 

By the time he had found a good place to lie down together with his new friend, the creature had gone very quiet. Jazz could still hear its body if he listened hard enough, and he figured that it was sleeping.  
He himself quietly studied the odd pelt of this creature, and daydreamed idly about shedding is own pelt to join this odd one. 

He fell asleep a short while later, holding onto his strange new friend.

**Author's Note:**

> After nine hours in the arctic, Prowl is found by his colleagues. Though severely undercooled, he makes a full recovery. His footage of meeting with a rare mer goes viral, and he is offered funding for a show about the mer and himself.  
> Jazz learns some human words, and regains hope that he will not have to live his life as an orca, but as the intelligent mer he really is. He finds his lust for life in meeting new humans, and solving puzzles. 
> 
> Chromedome and Rewind take control of the old show, and win over new fans with their vlog-like style of filming. 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed! Please do mind that due to the author's terrible habit of procrastination, the latter part of this fanfic are wholly un-beta'd and might have some awkward passages, phrases, and typo's.


End file.
